


The Truth is, they are Happy

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Happy Canon, M/M, Suicide mention, drug mention, implied sexual situations, season 4 fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 05:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9370658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: a different ending. a happy one.EXCERPT:"He attempts to cook one night.. He is in extraordinary need of better culinary skills, it turns out. When John comes home to see the mess Sherlock, he now realizes was rather rude of him to leave uncleaned, made, he laughs until tears stream down his cheeks. It makes him happy, he hasn’t seen John so happy in years. It doesn’t make him as happy when the laughter fades but the tears don’t. They sit on the couch together, John’s cheek pressed against Sherlock’s shoulder. “I love you.”"





	

**Author's Note:**

> written because what we were given was not enough. because we deserved more, and because they deserved more.

_Whatever happened in the timeslot that The Final Problem was supposed to take place, it was certainly not The Final Problem. It involved a lot of guns and a lot of running. It resulted in a dislocated shoulder, a cheesy love confession, a single sloppy kiss with one of the participants backed against a wall, and far, far too many bruises, both emotional and physical. Assume these things, along with the general existence of Euros and the explosion of the flat._

……….  
The flat is mostly just rubble. Their section, at least. Mrs Hudson’s living quarters were not damaged, but she insisted on staying with her friend up in Manchester anyway. Said something about the sound, and having needed a break for far too long. Sherlock didn’t really pay attention, only hugged her just before she bundled into a Taxi. He was too busy looking at what was left of his previous life.  
This really solidified it, there was no longer even physical evidence of the simpler days when it was just him and John. Now, it was just him, John, no flat, and a baby. Rosie. Sherlock liked Rosie. She had constantly flushed cheeks and liked to throw her cereal at him.  
Sherlock knew this because it was often just him and Rosie. It was flattering, to be trusted so consistently with a creature so important to John. But it was also worrying, the amount of time John spent outside. Sometimes he would go for walks, but sometimes Sherlock could see him just outside of their temporary flat, leaning against the side of the building with his head in his hands.  
Sherlock was usually one to assume all sorts of things and deduce every detail of any given situation, but he let his mind be calm for once, and decided not to snoop on John.  
This was evidently a bad decision, as one Sunday night after a day of reviewing the re-construction of 221b and then calming a very upset Rosie, who had somehow gotten a splinter in her tiny, chubby palm, he found John with a bottle of Whiskey. No cup, just the bottle. Half empty.  
Sherlock hadn’t observed a bottle of Whiskey in the house previously, certainly not a full one.  
John drunkenly slurred that it was Afghanistan again. That it was getting bad. Sherlock kissed him on the forehead, the first intimate moment since the lip-to-lip kiss weeks ago, and ushered him to their bed. John slept like a goddamn starfish and often it could make it hard to fall asleep, but he found it too endearing to complain about.  
For once, they had a night miraculously free of toddler tears.  
………….  
In the morning, John talked mindlessly about the flashbacks to Sherlock. He described rather horrific scenes, and once or twice Sherlock was tempted to reach towards John’s lap and clasp his hands over Rosie’s ears. He didn’t, though. And after, he lifted Rosie up and set her down to sleep somewhere more convenient, then pressed a tentative kiss to John’s lips. It was a start.  
Their first kiss had been desperate and filled with pent up emotions desperate to be felt before their lives assumedly ended. This wasn’t the case now, however. This kiss was soft and intimidating and rarely reciprocated at first. Sherlock stopped the kiss before it became too much. Even as emotionally blunt as he felt sometimes, he could tell how fragile and disoriented John still was. How fragile he himself till was. They had been so close to losing everything. They didn’t though, and that’s what kept Sherlock going.  
……….  
Two weeks later, they stood in front of the brand new half-building with a single suitcase a blonde haired toddler who refused to stop tugging at Sherlock’s annoyingly long mane of black curls. He struggled to get Rosie to unclench her tiny fists and rather desperately thrust her to John, who grumbled and sighed in fake exasperation.  
He had gotten better. Mentally at least. But Sherlock could tell that there was a slight difference in the way he walked. Sherlock couldn’t quite pinpoint it and truthfully he didn’t very much want to.  
The three of them, the tiny somewhat cracked family, walked into the flat with light-ish hearts and dark-ish thoughts. Excluding Rosie, of course. No one really knows how dark the thoughts of one year old are, if any thoughts at all. She simply babbled baby speech and tugged on John’s ear, apparently finding it infinitely interesting.  
It is empty, the flat. 221b is very empty. What hurts Sherlock the most for some reason, is the wallpaper. It’s different. Of course the previous wallpaper was positively hideous in his opinion, but he’d gotten so used to it. It seemed like home. Besides the blatant lack of furniture and the different wallpaper, it also smelled different. The ever present scent of coffee grounds and something burning, along with the smell Sherlock couldn’t quite explain but heavily associated with “Home”, was gone.  
It smelled like sawdust. That was about it.  
They unpacked quickly and Sherlock pulled out his violin as John worked on feeding Rosie. He started to play. It was not sad, but it wasn’t full of the usual vigor. He could sense John’s eyes on him again, and then smiled :> when John cursed due to Rosie happily flinging a glob of her food onto his shirt.  
While John washed it off in the bathroom, he stopped playing for a moment to lean down and press barely a peck of a kiss to Rosie’s tiny nose and whisper “I wouldn’t want to eat that stuff either.” John catches him just in time to see him wipe a bit of food from her chin and flash her a smile brighter than the sun itself. John goes back to the bathroom to take a moment.  
………..  
It has been a few weeks since they moved back in. They have redecorated the entire flat- at least with the essentials. Sherlock knows that they don’t exactly have the money to replace the hideous wallpaper with even more hideous but homely wallpaper. They haven’t worked a case in months and Mycroft is still in struggling in the hospital, so they can’t get help from him. He dares not ask Molly or Greg or any of his other… Friends? Friends. They have done so much already.  
And so he leaves John and Rosie asleep on the couch to go pick up some yellow spray paint.  
The cashier gives him a slightly odd look, and when Sherlock glancesat his reflection in a passing mirror he is practically affronted by the bags under his eyes and the state of his hair and the lines on his forehead that have come to light with the constant frown he guesses he’s been wearing.  
No wonder Rosie shrieked in surprise when he woke her from her nap over his own shoulder to put her to bed.  
He is slightly embarassed to go back into the flat looking like this even though he has looked this way for probably quite some time, and John didn’t seem to care.  
Poor John. Sherlock can tell he’s struggling not to limp. He drinks too much coffee and sometimes he puts various shots of alcohol in his mug as well. He often wakes Sherlock up when he’s thrashing in his sleep and sometimes he won’t wake up and it scares Sherlock. He’s so afraid that one day he’ll wake up and John won’t. It is a terrifying prospect that Sherlock feels he will never let go of.  
He’s victim to a scarily strong wave of hatred for both Euros and himself. He flings himself upstairs and ignores the tearing sound of his sleeve catching on the lock when he stomps into the flat. Blind with anger and misery he disregards John and Rosie on his armchair and uncaps the spray paint.  
The smile he sprays is not the same as the original. It’s mouth is more crooked and one eye is annoyingly larger than the other. As the white anger fades away and his hearing slowly comes back- a sense he didn’t realize he’d lost in the first place- he hears the scared cries of the child he loves so dearly. “Sherlock?” John is clutching Rosie to his chest and looking absolutely terrified. Sherlock collapses down onto his knees and sobs. Everything is different and hard and he wishes so much that he could go back to simpler times. It hurts. His entire body aches, but mostly his heart. The rust on his brain feels like concrete and he just can’t seem to think the same.  
……….  
Sherlock Holmes doesn’t think the same anymore. He’s still the smartest person to ever grace this planet in John’s opinion, but it’s not the same. He still deduces and studies and understands, but John realizes that Sherlock’s “mind palace” is no longer. There were no builders to reconstruct it like there were for 221b.  
……….  
John works at the doctors off and on, and today he is coming home late. The flat is far too quiet for Sherlock’s liking. Rosie is asleep. He loves Rosie. He loves her because she is a tiny beautiful human being who is growing and learning every day. He loves her because she likes to pinch his nose and poke at the freckles that Sherlock has absolutely no idea existed. He loves her because a small part of her is John, and he loves John. When Sherlock thinks about that, he wonders what they are. Boyfriends? Good friends that share shy kisses every now and then? He doesn’t know. Sherlock’s thoughts lose their tracks unbearably easy.  
………..  
He attempts to cook one night.. He is in extraordinary need of better culinary skills, it turns out. When John comes home to see the mess Sherlock, he now realizes was rather rude of him to leave uncleaned, made, he laughs until tears stream down his cheeks. It makes him happy, he hasn’t seen John so happy in years. It doesn’t make him as happy when the laughter fades but the tears don’t. They sit on the couch together, John’s cheek pressed against Sherlock’s shoulder. “I love you.” John says. Sherlock says it back. They kiss. Sherlock hopes that they are more than just friends that share very salty but happy kisses sometimes.  
……….  
He finds it when he is searching for his bag of rocks. They’re special rocks, and Sherlock needs them quite badly for an experiment. He hasn’t been on all that many cases but he is on one now and he needs these rocks.  
The case is forgotten when he runs out of the room grasping the item in his left hand, right hand clenched furiously. He yells at John. He is angry and upset and worried for John. Rosie starts crying and John leaves her lying on Sherlock’s armchair to stand up and yell desperately back at Sherlock.  
He can’t concentrate anymore and his sweaty hand slips, pulling the gun’s trigger. A bullet slices through the air and hits the wall above the western window, making a puff of wallpaper shreds float down.  
They calm after that. Sherlock goes outside to take breath, and to throw the gun against their flat wall so many times it dents the hilt. He throws the gun into the recycling bin without a care in the world. He doesn’t want John anywhere near a gun. He can’t risk John hurting himself.  
When he walks back in he is attacked by a peppering of kisses from John and a promise that he won’t hurt himself. He says he loves Sherlock too much for that. Sherlock is glad, and enthusiastically kisses back. After some tea and many more apologies, they go to bed. Rosie sleeps with them.  
……….  
Rosie is 2 years old. As much as John and Sherlock love her, they need more time. They are not even close to healing. 3 days a week Rosie goes to a daycare/preschool. It is a relief to have more time for cases and to themselves. They love Rosie very much, but this is always who they will be. John jokingly calls Sherlock his boyfriend the same day, and Sherlock has a very hard time hiding his blush. That night their kissing progresses into much more. He’s very sore the morning after.  
……….  
John’s limp is back. It’s unusually bad. He limps around the house with his cane grumbling like an old man. Sherlock tries to make fun of John for it, tries to lighten the seriousness, but he can’t.  
It’s getting very hard, even with Molly and Mrs Hudson- and once, Greg-. It’s just all getting really hard. They take even less cases now that Mycroft generously gave Mrs Hudson a lifetime of rent for their flat. Really, he owes them more than that. But it’s enough.  
They’re still somewhat reckless and still absolutely live for The Game. But nowadays they live more for each other, and for Rosie. And it’s even harder than you think to run with such a bad limp, Sherlock can tell.  
They’re happy, though. He supposes they’ve done enough work and pressured their brains enough for a retirement already.  
Although his mind isn’t the same, sometimes he still gets desperate for cases. That’s always fun.  
… But John never miraculously forgets his cane in the midst of the chase, like the first time. It’s very hard.  
……….  
John catches Rosie toying with something on the floor. It’s a pack of cigarettes. She asks him what they are, and he tells her to play with something else. She doesn’t talk often, she is very young still after all. It’s a very calming sight to see her endlessly scribbling with crayons. There are marks all over the walls, along with her pictures. Sherlock is always putting them up among various case files that never seem to get taken down. It’s a silly sight. What wasn’t silly was John confronting Sherlock about the cigarettes.  
………….  
It’s very hard. They struggle a lot, John and Sherlock. They knew it wouldn’t be easy, staying sane, but it gets near impossible sometimes. One of the only things that can calm Sherlock down is looking at the ring on his finger. Sometimes he’ll stare at it for hours just to calm down.  
The first time John caught him doing this he asked Sherlock if he regretted it. John did not regret asking that question, as it resulted in Sherlock proving he definitely did not regret marrying John.  
………….  
It is hard, but they are together and happy and a family. A family! So it gets easier, Sherlock supposes, even though it will always be hard. The truth is, they are happy. It’s that simple. They’re happy. It’s not really their wedding rings that make them so happy, it’s not the sex or the kisses or the unbelievably joyful look on John’s Sister’s face when John and Sherlock bring Rosie dressed as best as that little girl could to her wedding. It’s each other. They make each other happy.  
…………  
Sherlock tells John this one night, and John smiles. They are happy. It’s okay. Everything is okay. They are happy. They are finally happy.


End file.
